The Angry Exile: Wandering lonely as a cloud.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 2 July 2009

Wandering lonely as a cloud.

There's a very interesting post at Watts Up With That about the alternative climate change theory of cloud cover being affected by cosmic rays. I came across this a few years ago and being interested in alternative theories I dropped a few quid on a book called The Chilling Stars by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder. It covers Svensmark's theory pretty well, but it's very much written for the layman. Read the book for the full SP, but the very short version is that it's cooler if there are more clouds and warmer if there are fewer (which fits with the experience of anyone who's noticed the difference between a cloudless day in midsummer and a very overcast day around the same time), but clouds don't just form from nothing. Not easily at any rate. Something is needed to seed the cloud in the same way that raindrops form around a speck of dust or pearls form around something that's got into the shell of the oyster or mussel. Svensmark's theory is that one mechanism for providing this seed for cloud formation is cosmic rays coming through the atmosphere and smacking electrons off air molecules. These free electrons serve as seeds for tiny droplets of natural sulphuric acid to form around, and in turn the droplets of sulphur dioxide are seeds for drops of water vapour... and bingo, extra clouds. And, very importantly for the climate, cosmic rays aren't constant. One of the reasons for this is that the sun's magnetic field affects them, driving more away when it's strong and allowing more into the inner solar system when it weakens*. There's obviously more to it than that and of course the book goes into much more depth, not only of Svensmark's theory but also of how it was developed (just as interesting) and where it sometimes explains historical climate rather better than the man made CO2 theory.

Now despite it's appeal and plausibility it's still just a theory and could be wrong (which is also 100% applicable to the CO2 warming idea, though it's not often you'll find any of its supporters admitting that even as they attack opposing theories for the same thing). And as pointed out on WUWT the warming alarmists of the IPCC and Realclimate etc. claim it's been discredited, but for one thing they were never going to support a theory that would destroy their cosy world and the funding that flows into it, and for another they're not above supporting discredited theories themselves when it does support the cause (Hockey Stick anyone?). And a final point on that, did they actually wait for the theory to even be tested before screaming "discredited"? In my copy of The Chilling Stars (2007 edition) they'd only just begun the process of testing the idea experimentally. Yes, experiments, not computer models - wink wink. One proposed experiment, dubbed CLOUD (a crappy backronym**, but at least easy to remember), was to use a particle accelerator going through a specially constructed chamber as a man made, and presumably therefore controllable, stand in for cosmic rays, the idea being to fill the chamber with different mixtures of air, water vapour and H2SO4 and see if changes in the particle beam can affect the creation of cloud condensation nuclei. It had been hoped that CERN would run the experiment, but when they decided to build the Large Hadron Colliding Black Hole Creating World Squisher CERN didn't have the money to spare. Come back in a few years, they said. To kill time until CLOUD could be built (and they were talking about maybe getting some data in 2010) they designed a smaller scale experiment, small enough to fit in the basement of Danish National Space Centre in fact, that they could run in the meantime using the real cosmic rays that hit the planet all he time. This experiment, called SKY, got going towards the end of 2004. They got some interesting results and had to tweak the theory in places, but generally the results from SKY were positive. Certainly they were enough for CERN to come back to the CLOUD experiment after the LHC funding was taken care of. And that, as posted on Watts Up With That, is about where we are now. CLOUD06 has returned some "encouraging results", on the basis of which CERN have stumped up the money for a larger experiment they're calling CLOUD09. One thing it certainly won't do is prove the cosmic ray theory correct - they're only testing to see if they can increase cloud formation, not whether they actually do, and on top of that no experiment ever proves any theory beyond doubt since the possibility always exists that a rerun may produce results that will hole it massively below the waterline. But as I said before, that applies to man made CO2 theories as well, and it's just as possible that CLOUD or successor research will torpedo them instead.

If you've got the time go read the whole thing at WUWT as well as download the PDF at the bottom of the WUWT post. It's the slides for a presentation on the theory and the experiments, and it gives more background and depth than I have. Not as much as a good read through the book (2008 edition apparently has an extra chapter written more recently than the 07 edition on my shelf) or possibly a video of the presentation being made, but still worth flicking through.

*Which could explain why the Little Ice Age was accompanied by a largely spotless and relatively inactive sun. Fits anyway.
**Oh, if you insist. "Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets" apparently.